Intonation processing in congenital amusia: discrimination, identification and imitation

This study investigated whether congenital amusia, a neuro-developmental disorder of musical perception, also has implications for speech intonation processing. In total, 16 British amusics and 16 matched controls completed five intonation perception tasks and two pitch threshold tasks. Compared with controls, amusics showed impaired performance on discrimination, identification and imitation of statements and questions that were characterized primarily by pitch direction differences in the final word. This intonation-processing deficit in amusia was largely associated with a psychophysical pitch direction discrimination deficit. These findings suggest that amusia impacts upon one’s language abilities in subtle ways, and support previous evidence that pitch processing in language and music involves shared mechanisms

PATTERN ELEMENT HEARING AIDS AND SPEECH ASSESSMENT AND TRAINING

Summary This paper has been prepared for a meeting (in Beijing 9-10 IX 1996) organised jointly by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Department of Phonetics and Linguistics at UCL. The meeting is concerned with new technology hearing aids, with special reference to phonetically important speech dimensions and bio-active implants. The particular aim here is to give examples of speech element processing with special reference to perceptual and productive assessment. The same basic principles apply to assessment and training for both prosthesis and patient, however, and they can be briefly defined by the following summary points concerning the present and potential advantages of using essential speech dimensions:- • clarity of perception and relevance to communication • targeted signal processing • complementary assessment of prosthesis and patient • simply structured adult rehabilitation and training • matching acquisition to normal stages of development Background The pattern element hearing aid is intrinsically designed to achieve three principal objectives. First, to target the extraction from speech signals of components which are directly related to important phonetic dimensions. Second, to employ signal processing methods which utilise these dimensions so as to get a degree of immunity from the effects of external noise. Third, to provide a rational perceptual basis for matching the operation of the aid to the individual listener's auditory, and language, abilities

Rhythmic classification of languages based on voice timing

Speech rhythm classes can be distinguished acoustically and perceptually from the variability of consonantal durations and the relative durations of vocalic intervals. The present research investigated whether this distinction can be made robustly, simply on the basis of voice timing, by measuring the durational characteristics of voiced and voiceless intervals in fluent speech. We show that voice patterns — in terms of vocal fold vibration — provide an effective basis for classification and that they can be automatically processed for large datasets. The possible implications that this finding can have on the ability of infants to distinguish between languages of different rhythmic classes are discussed

Spoken Language Assessment in the European Context

Fourcin A, Gibbon D. Spoken Language Assessment in the European Context. Literary and Linguistic Computing. 1994;9(1):79-86.The increasing scope of work in the field of Speech and Linguistic Engineering is gradually leading to the future introduction of robust techniques for real-time multilingual operation. The ‘Speech Assessment Methods’ ESPRIT Project 2589 (SAM) is directed towards the definition and application of multilingual standards to assist in the assessment, evaluation, cross-comparision, and further advance of these developments. The SAM group involves collaboration between twenty-six laboratories in eight countries, SIX within the EEC and two from EFTA. Our work is concerned with the establishment of databases, speech and language descriptive methods, and quantitative tools for the assessment both of speech recognizers (‘input’) and speech synthesis (‘output’) systems. Although our present activity involves only the eight languages of the present partners it is also conceived so as to facilitate the introduction of other member states' languages. If appropriate decisions are not made now, the languages of Europe will be catastrophically disadvantaged relative to English language forms, when the speech technology developments which are merely foreshadowed now become a reality in the next century. Standard European databases are already available on compact disk for five languages and a much larger data-gathering exercise has just been completed. Common workstation facilities using a standard configuration (SESAM) are being used in the laboratories of the project. These provide a reference for the application of a comprehensive range of software packages designed for input and output assessment in addition to the provision of supporting linguistic analysis software. Common methods of linguistic standardization have been evolved and a common computer compatible phonemic notation (SAMPA) has been introduced for European languages. A structured perspective for standards and resource-oriented themes in future speech and spoken language work is outlined